Trials, not tribunals, needed in Pakistan

For CPJ, most of this weekend was taken up learning about
and responding to the assassination attempt on Geo TV's most prominent anchor
and commentator, Hamid Mir. CPJ quickly released
a statement after the attack and fielded questions from international and
Pakistani media almost nonstop. On Sunday, I met with about 30 Pakistani
journalists and community leaders in New York to discuss the situation. The
government has offered a reward of 10 million Pakistani rupees (about $102,000)
for information leading to the apprehension of the people who tried to kill the
very high-profile Mir.

This weekend's response wasn't unlike that on March
28, when gunmen sprayed the car of TV anchor and widely-respected analyst
Raza Rumi, a member of the Express Group of media organizations. And we
handled a flood of questions after the January
17 attack on an Express TV van in Karachi, in which three media workers
were killed and a cameraman injured. It was the third attack in eight months on
the Express Media Group. An attack on an Express bureau chief's home was the
fourth. The attack on Rumi was the fifth.

But in the middle of all the phone calling and emailing in
the last few days, I received two email messages that took the focus off Mir
and Raza Rumi, but are, in fact, all part of the same problem. I've conjoined
both messages and edited them to make them a bit clearer:

Dear All,

Still we are waiting for justice
regarding Shan Dahar's case, please raise case of Shan along with Hamid Mir. No
more investigation is done in this case, please take up our case to [the] government
level.

We have submitted an application to
our honorable Deputy Inspector General of Police Larkana Division for a
re-investigation of Shan Dahar's case one week before, but no output. We need
your support & cooperation all the time. Could you please follow up our
case with higher authorities, we don't have approach nor any source. Your
prompt action will be highly appreciated, awaiting suitable response.

Riaz & Fouzia

Brother-in-law of Shan

Sister of Shan Dahar

Karachi, Pakistan

My CPJ colleague Elisabeth Witchel, our international expert
on questions of impunity in the killing of journalists, and I met Riaz and
Fouzia in Karachi in March, a week or so prior to a CPJ delegation meeting with
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Information and Law Minister Pervaiz Rasheed. The
couple is adamant in pursuing justice for Shan Dahar, and we've promised them
that we would raise their case whenever we could.

There has been little substantive movement in the
investigation of the shooting death of Dahar, a local reporter
for Abb Takk television. He died on January 1 this year, while filming near a
pharmacy in Larkana. He had already produced one story on prescription drugs
being illegally resold in the town, and was taking video of a package bearing a
"not for resale" label on it shortly before he was shot, according to his
family. Nasir Baig Chughtai, the director of news for Abb Takk, confirms that
Dahar was on assignment at the time he was killed. He died in the hospital
after waiting for hours for medical treatment, which never came, possibly
because it was the New Year holiday.

CPJ's
data show that 96 percent of journalists murdered around the world are
local journalists covering local stories. Dahar's case is every bit as typical
of that reality as the murder attempts on Rumi or Mir. And worse, in 90 percent
of the cases of journalists killed, no one is brought to justice--the killings
happen with impunity. Pakistan has the world's ninth
worst record for bringing the killers of journalists to justice, according
to CPJ's annual Impunity Index.

So, starting on January 1: An increasingly bad record for the Nawaz
Sharif government in terms of journalists' safety. Much has been made of the somewhat
successful prosecution in March of some of the perpetrators, but none of
the masterminds, in the January 2011 murder of Geo TV reporter Wali Khan Babar.
But the credit for that cannot be given to the Sharif government. The trial was
underway when the government came to power and former Supreme Court Chief Justice
Iftikhar Chaudhry was instrumental in pressuring the federal and Sindh
governments to bring the trial to a conclusion. What worked were the tactics of
hearing the case in an Anti-Terrorist Court; changing of the trial venue to a
less dangerous location; the use of special prosecutors; and a witness
protection program for those with the courage to testify. This has emerged as a
model for such politically sensitive trials, even though they may come at a
cost: In early April Abdul
Saboor, the brother of Abdul Maroof, the special public prosecutor in Wali
Khan Babar murder case, was killed by unidentified men. No motive has been
ascertained, police say.

When CPJ
met with Sharif and Pervaiz Rasheed in March, we walked away with the
feeling that the government realizes it has a problem when it comes to
journalists' security and is ready to take steps to deal with it. Amid the
ongoing killings, attacks and unrelenting threats, their plans are coming
closer to be realized.

In an April 14 piece in The
Express Tribune, "Protecting
journalists in Pakistan," Mazhar Abbas, who won a CPJ International Press
Freedom Award in 2007, outlines where things stand in terms of the
government's efforts to address the problem legislatively. Abbas, a former
secretary-general of the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists, is far from a
government apologist. He remains a strong advocate of journalists in the best
trade-union tradition. But even he says, "There is a sense of realization
within the government that the security of media in Pakistan is the
responsibility of the state."

Abbas explains that in recent days the government submitted
20 draft proposals for consideration by the National Assembly, which arose out
of its consultations with most of the stakeholders to the problem. The
proposals cover everything from insurance for journalists to safety training,
who pays for protective gear for staff on dangerous assignments, and how
quickly attacks on journalists must be investigated and brought to trial. A
main forum for that discussion has been the Pakistan
Coalition on Media Safety, a group that arose just over a year ago out of a
U.N. conference in Islamabad, the International
Conference on Safety & Security of Pakistani Journalists. Now, in 2014,
a year later, Abbas says he hopes the legislation to protect journalists will
be enacted by World Press Freedom Day, May 3, 2015, a year from now--an
optimistic but achievable deadline.

Meanwhile: After this weekend's attack on Mir, the highly
respected Zohra Yusuf of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said, "There
should be an independent and judicial inquiry commission but that should not
end like the one established to probe into killing of journalist Saleem
Shahzad. This time the attempt went unsuccessful so there is a need to inquire
about the details and people behind the attack before they plan another one." Her
idea was adopted by the government
on Sunday.

CPJ has been highly skeptical of the value of special
judicial inquiries and tribunals like those called for by the HRCP's Yusuf. See,
for example, "Justice
for Saleem Shahzad? We've seen this before..." and "What should happen following the Raza Rumi attack."
We feel that special investigations, even when they include high-ranking
judicial figures, circumvent the basic application of the laws of the country
for the crime of murder: a police investigation, the appointment of a prosecutor,
a trial, a conviction, and a sentencing. We feel that as the government waits
for its proposed new legislation, it should use those tools it already has, the
tools it used in the Babar case, to continue to prosecute the ongoing attacks
on journalists. The threats and violence remain as prevalent as they ever have
been, and show no signs of abating. Prosecutions of those who would kill
journalists should start now.

Bob Dietz, coordinator of CPJ’s Asia Program, has reported across the continent for news outlets such as CNN and Asiaweek. He has led numerous CPJ missions, including ones to Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka. Follow him on Twitter @cpjasia and Facebook @ CPJ Asia Desk.

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